How to Write Clean Code

A robust suite of unit tests acts as a safety harness, giving you courage to make bold changes. But there’s an art to making tests that give you useful information, while keeping the tests themselves readable & maintainable.

Unit tests written after production code are hard to write, and may only confirm your biases. Test Driven Development shapes production code in response to tests, in an evolutionary manner. The secret sauce? Continuous Refactoring.

We can’t just bang code together and expect it to be testable. Testability must be designed in. That design brings other benefits, making it easier to modify the code. The ultimate goal? Drive down your cost of change.

Inspired me

Thanks for a great blog. You've really inspired me down the TDD route!

Mikael Hellqvist

Even customers are asking for tests now!

I have to blame Jon. As I read through code, I start thinking about how can I test something, instead of simply adding another "quick fix." It's paying off, as more and more of the team catch their first bug using tests, or sleep better at night. Even customers are asking for tests now!